The Three Stages of the Spiritual Life Explained
Translator’s note: In his book on correct belief entitled Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton wrote that “original sin is the only part of Christian theology that can really be proved.” For evidence of it, there is no need to look farther than the headlines in a newspaper. The Sacrament of Baptism takes away original sin and begins the life of grace yet leaves the baptized person with the weaknesses of the children of Adam. This is why the spiritual life is a long and often difficult journey.
This article consists of two excerpts from sermons given by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in Écône. The first, given during a Mass with Confirmations on May 22, 1988, explains the lingering effects of original sin on the soul. The second, given on January 1, 1977, describes the classic three stages of the spiritual life.
I
Christian life is a battle. It’s a fact. The Holy Ghost is a spirit of life, a spirit who fights against the spirit of sin. Now the spirit of sin entered into the world through original sin, and we are all infected by it. Even after receiving the grace of Baptism, although original sin is wiped away, the consequences of it remain. We are sick from the consequences of original sin.
Saint Thomas Aquinas says that we have four wounds in our souls that remain after we have received the grace of Baptism; they put us in a lower state compared to the spiritual health that we ought to have (Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 85, art. 3). We therefore need God’s graces in order to be healed of these wounds. The first is the wound of ignorance: it is difficult for us to think about God, to live with the Good Lord, to understand that the spiritual life is much higher than material life, temporal life. We are blinded by the things of this world. This blindness is like a screen that hides from us the spiritual world toward which we are traveling, toward which we are oriented: an infinitely more beautiful, infinitely more perfect world, infinitely superior to the one here below.
Then there is the wound of malice: unfortunately, we sometimes have in our hearts feelings that rise up and are not good; they are not consistent with love of God and love of neighbor.
Then there is the wound of weakness: instead of being strong and keeping God’s Law, we are weak; we fall repeatedly because we are weak.
Finally, the fourth wound is concupiscence: we are attracted by all these worldly goods, riches, pleasures, satisfactions, amusements, then we forget Heaven and we disobey the Good Lord. These four wounds remain in us, and this is why we need to fight.1
II
You know that spiritual writers distinguish three stages in progress toward perfection, toward union with Our Lord, which they call the purgative way, the illuminative way, and the contemplative way. The purgative way is the stage of beginners, of those who are struggling against the vices and faults that they may have. The grace of Our Lord is strong, but so are the marks left on us by original sin; they are still powerful, and so it is necessary to fight. Oh, it is necessary to fight for your whole life to move away from sin, to distance yourself from your vices throughout your life. However, after an initial stage that this fervent fight against all our sins has perhaps caused us to go through, after virtue has finally triumphed at least partially over our sins and vices, the illuminative way helps us to understand the Gospel better, to understand better the mysteries of Our Lord Jesus Christ. When we read the Gospel or devotional books, when we pray, the Good Lord helps us to understand better what He is, why He came, what we are, where we are going, where we come from, and why we are here on earth. Then our life is lit up and our virtue becomes deeper; our faith, too, becomes firmer, more courageous: more combative, perhaps, against the errors of modern times, against the scandals that surround us.
My dear confreres, I think that this phase of illuminating grace, which lights up our intellect and our heart, is precisely one of these phases that we are experiencing today, for you, in particular, because I truly think that you are receiving special graces in these times. Although unfortunately there are many who apostatize, many who leave the Church, who abandon the Church and the practice of their religion in this crisis, you have prayed more, and the Good Lord certainly has illumined you, has given you lights about what the Catholic religion is, about what He, Our Lord is, and about what He came to bring to us. And so you have become more devoted to Him, you love Him more, and you follow Him more ardently, more fervently. We must thank Our Lord for this grace which is at the same time a trial—a difficult trial—to think that it is necessary to wage a battle and to fight sometimes against those who ought to give us these lights. But we are not the ones who choose the trials that we will meet along our path. When the trial comes, we must cling to Our Lord Jesus Christ more than ever.
The grace of Our Lord is strong, but so are the marks left on us by original sin; they are still powerful, and so it is necessary to fight. Oh, it is necessary to fight for your whole life to move away from sin, to distance yourself from your vices throughout your life.
Finally, the spiritual writers tell us that this life leads, little by little, to the contemplative life, and so it should normally lead every Christian who truly loves and practices his Christian life. What does “contemplative life” mean? Just that one loves God, that one lives with Our Lord, that one lives the whole day with the Good Lord. At every moment the thought of God occurs to us, in the events that we encounter, in the trials that we undergo. In everything that may somewhat awaken our heart and our imagination, suddenly the thought of God occurs to our soul. All the events of life, both the simplest and the most important, are subject to the Good Lord who watches our soul. We live during the day with God, with Our Lord Jesus Christ. We love to pray, we love to take our rosary in hand. The Curé of Ars, St. John Vianney, used to see in his parish church an old man who often came to pray and stayed for long hours in front of the Blessed Sacrament. One day the Curé of Ars asked him, “But what do you do there?” The man replied, “Well, I look at Him, and He looks at me.” In all his simplicity, that good soul said: “I look at the Good Lord and the Good Lord looks at me.” That is contemplation, you know; we must not complicate things. It is living with the Good Lord, being with our Father, Our Father in Heaven, and the Father, we know, loves His children. He loves us. Consequently, when we are in the chapel—of course, in the chapel more than anywhere else—or in other places, at home or at work, when we perform the duties of our state in life according to our profession, in everything that we do, if we are with the Good Lord, the Good Lord looks at us and we look at Him. That is the life of a Christian. May it be our life, too.2
Endnotes
1 Monseigneur Marcel Lefebvre, Écône, chaire de vérité: Intégrale des sermons à Écône (Éditions IRIS, 2015), 915-916.
2 Ibid., 231-232.